Programme of the Synagogue

 

80th anniversary of the largest transport of Slovenes to Auschwitz

Short documentary film

10. Avgust 2022

There is no place in the world more marked by the Holocaust than the Auschwitz concentration camp: during its operation, from May 1940 to January 1945, around 1.3 million people were sent there. In total, about 1.1 million people were killed in Auschwitz, of which 960,000 were Jews, or nearly one in six of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. That is why 27th of January, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, was chosen as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Auschwitz is also a camp to which probably around 2,600 people from Slovenia were taken. The majority were Slovenians who were sent to this camp as political prisoners. Arrests of Slovenes were most massive in early August 1942, when 1,261 people were gathered in the transit camp in Okoliška (today I.) elementary school in Celje. Everyone between the ages of 18 and 55 was sent to concentration camps, mostly to Auschwitz. Children under the age of 18 were taken from their parents and are therefore called the stolen children. The largest transport of the stolen children took place on 10th of August 1942, when 441 stolen children were taken from Celje to the Frohnleiten children’s camp.

The largest transport of Slovenes to Auschwitz, which left Celje on 9th of August 1942, brought 451 Slovenes, 333 women and 118 men. On the 10th of August 1942, they arrived to Auschwitz.

On the 80th anniversary of the largest transport of Slovenes to Auschwitz the Synagogue Maribor, the Museum of Velenje, and the Museum of Recent History Celje collected the testimonies of a few stolen children and survivors of the camp and combined them into a short documentary film.

It is equiped with English subtitles.

You are cordially invited to watch it.